Cocaine and Sudden, Fatal Heart Attacks

A researcher at Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Deanconess Medical Center reported this month in Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Association, even more bad news about cocaine’s effect on the heart. The news is particularly important given that recent estimates indicate that some 30 million Americans have experimented at least once with cocaine — and an estimated 5 million are currently regular users.

It has long been known that cocaine — an adrenaline-like drug — increases heart disease risk. In the body, cocaine acts as a stimulant — increasing heart rate and blood pressure, dilating pupils, raising body temperature — and may cause seizures, heart spasms and abnormal heart rhythms.

But the results of the new Harvard study even surprised the author, Dr. Murray Mittlemann, who concluded: “Cocaine is larger than all of the other triggers that bring on the onset of a heart attack”. Mittleman noted that his data suggested the risk of heart attack was particularly significant in the first hour after the use of cocaine.

Dr. Gilbert Ross, Medical Director of ACSH, pointed out that “millions of Americans experiment with cocaine, and deem it to be a relatively safe, ‘recreational’ drug. This report should put a chill into those occasional users who have, until now, felt immune from cocaine’s potentially deadly effects.”